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Just short-track racing? No. No, it isn't

Kyle Larson won the inaugural Battle at the Beach short-track race at Daytona International Speedway. Photo by Getty Images for NASCAR

Ray Evernham told me this in confidence and I said I wouldn't write about it. That was maybe 15 years ago, and I'm hoping the statute of limitations is over, and that Evernham won't mind.

I was following him around for a story on his Rainbow Warriors team starring, of course, driver Jeff Gordon, with whom the elder Evernham had a big-brother relationship.

A week or two earlier -- it might have been the Food City 500 at Bristol, I can't recall -- Gordon had won a race by knocking the leader out of the way on the last lap. Gordon seemed not at all apologetic -- after all, this was the era when Dale Earnhardt made full-contact, last-lap passing not only acceptable, but cute: Remember how he spun Terry Labonte on the last lap at Bristol in 1999, then explained it away by saying he just wanted to “rattle his cage”? Dale, you scamp!

Anyway, Evernham said he and Gordon had a serious discussion about that. “That is not how I want to win races,” Evernham said he told Gordon. The discussion may have become a little heated, but Evernham made his point: Win when you can do it honorably, finish second when you can't.

Monday night's inaugural Battle at the Beach, the short-track race carved out of the back straight at Daytona International Speedway, left me feeling that way. For 149 caution-filled laps on the odd little paper-clip oval laid out by 80 bundles of old tires, we watched the first three cars battle hard, and for the most part admirably. NASCAR's flavor of the month, Kyle Larson, was second to leader C.E. Falk III. They swapped the lead a couple of times on the last two laps, beating and banging, until Falk came out of turn four headed to the checkered flag well ahead of Larson. At which point Larson rammed Falk, stayed on the gas, and took the checkered flag first.

The world is divided into two kinds of people, and both were in the crowd Monday night: The half who insist that it is not only acceptable, but commendable to wreck the car in front of you to win, and the half who thinks it isn't. I had watched what I thought was a mediocre race building into a spectacular finish, then immediately dissolve into a mugging.

Actually, that's not true: Mugging victims might have a chance to fight back. Falk's car just sat there as a triumphant Larson did victory doughnuts.

NASCAR, of course, did nothing. Unless something is a black-and-white violation of a sentence in the rule book, the NASCAR officiating suite turns into a balls-free zone when it comes to last-lap antics. Deliberately spinning someone on lap 148 might result in the driver being sent to the rear. Do it on lap 149, and you get sent to victory lane.

Add to that the fact that Larson is the shining star of NASCAR's Diversity Program, which financed his way to a future millionaire tax bracket, so black-flagging him would be a risky career move. Had the relatively unknown Falk, a journeyman driver from Virginia, spun out Larson, I wonder if he would be allowed to keep the win.

Bottom line, Larson, in interviews afterwards, said it was just “short track racing.” It was not. At the vast majority of short tracks I've raced at or attended as a spectator, you don't get to keep a win after you purposely put the leader into the wall. Those who say that is “short track racing,” I've found, never go to short tracks, expect maybe Bowman Gray Stadium, which is apparently operated by the World Wrestling people.

Count me among those who think Kyle Larson has an immeasurably bright future. Watching him duel Kevin Swindell in midgets at the Chili Bowl this year will stick with me a long time. But so will watching him wreck C.E. Falk to win a race that pays pocket change to a guy like Larson, and would have meant the world to Falk.

Larson is racing twice tonight at the Battle of the Beach, and again Saturday night in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. Should we declare open season on Larson's back bumper?